Joy Watters reviews Dundee Reps 'thoughtful' production of an American classic.
Artistic director Jemima Levick returns to Dundee Rep with a thoughtful production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, which slowly reveals the Wingfield family clinging together as their dreams come to nothing and son Tom, protagonist and narrator, leaving them behind to pursue his.
Williams’ play, which first shot him to fame, draws on his own family and has a dreamlike feel to it in Levick’s hands. With a set like an underground bunker (designed by Alex Lowde), there is the sense of opening a family tomb to examine relics, which should not be disturbed but ultimately cannot be ignored.
Robert Jack as son Tom, the linchpin, is totally alive to all the demands of the role, from the guilt of leaving the family to the utter conviction that he has to think only of himself for complete fulfilment.
He looks back to the night he brings a gentleman caller to the house as a sop to his mother, who demands he find a suitor for his poor fragile sister. Millie Turner gives a finely nuanced performance as Laura, the painfully shy sister and daughter. The flashes of suffering across her face as she realises the gentleman caller will never be hers are heart-rending.
The mother, Amanda, a Southern belle brought low by circumstance, is beautifully created by Irene Macdougall, encompassing the faux grandeur of the old days and the desperation and hopelessness of the present.
Thomas Cotran as strangely unshaven gentleman caller Jim finds just the right pitch for his character, striving to keep all the family happy and observe the courtesies before dropping the bombshell that he is spoken for.
The sequence when the family home loses electricity and becomes candlelit is extraordinarily powerful and serves to underline the strength of all four performances.
The only false note is the addition of surtitles with words and lines from the play which is just plain wrong in such a subtle production. It’s as crude as having a cartoon balloon floating in the ether.
The Glass Menagerie runs until Saturday 20 September
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